Funeral stuff

Got back yesterday from an emergency trip home for my grandmother´s funeral. It all felt so surreal- I´m still integrating it all in my mind. One minute I´m putting the finishing touches on my lesson plans, the next John is calling me to say that my grandmother has not only been put on life support, but that she´s being taken off of it, and I´m calling Savannah to come get my lesson plans and teach my class for me. The next thing I know I´m buying a train ticket online, packing my suitcase, and waiting for John to finish the purchase of my airline ticket home. I slept two hours that night... Valentine´s Day... waking up a lot crying, imagining her face. We all knew she was ill, but we didn´t expect a fall that would cause hemorrhaging and sudden death. But that´s how it went, and really... I suppose it´s better that she didn´t have to suffer anymore. She was breaking out a lot, having more bad days than good ones, unable to eat, itching, and depressed. If it was only going to get worse from there, I´m glad she´s free of suffering now. I just wish I could talk to her again, hug her again. In honesty, the last time I hugged her, when I was leaving to go back to Morgantown before coming back to Spain after Christmas, I guess there was this sort of pressure to it. Those arms that had been so week were squeezing me with such firmness... and her eyes were filling with tears and she was looking at me hard. I felt she believed that would be the last time I saw her. But then things were going ok, as ok as it gets with advanced liver cirrhosis in someone operating on one kidney after a heart attack... and then she was just gone.
I was confused. Savannah had to basically sit on my bed and remind me to pack underwear, socks, and bras, because the only thing I remembered on my own was sweaters. Everyone was in- Erica came up from Miami, Emily drove in from Virginia, Natalie, Bryan, John and Megan made it from Clarksburg of course, I made it from Spain, and the rest of us live in the area. Jesse came down to her mom´s from Wheeling to be there for me. That meant a lot.
I felt like I wasn´t processing things for most of the time I was there. I mean, I was sort of slammed with reality on Skype, traveled for 22 hours, crossing the ocean and 6 time zones, and then I woke up in the morning and was making pancakes and eggs with Dad, and Pap-paw and Bryan were there, and Bryan was asking me to do a eulogy. I didn´t mind being asked. In fact, I thought about it on the way home, in the plane, that there was a fair chance I´d be doing that and that it would be an honor to speak about her, for her. So from that point, I felt like I just couldn´t lose it in the moment or I´d be lost and unable to do it. John, Megan, Erica, Emily, and Carly all stood up with me while I read it. Carly was crying uncontrollably behind me, so I paused for a minute to grab her. She settled down. I let her go. I kept going. Jesse was right in my line of view, so even though I had to keep my eyes on what I was reading, that gave me a visible, supportive soul to focus on. Joe was there, too, drove in with César and Claire from Morgantown. Of course, my family was there, too, but I felt more like I had to support them in that moment than to rely on them. Had I begun to think too much about them, I would have just buckled, too. I´ve given a lot of speeches, performed a lot in my day, but I never spoke with my knees knocking that hard before. Ultimately, it was OK.
She looked beautiful. The funeral home really did a good job on her. Too good. I kept feeling like she was going to get up and hug me. We were at Lori´s having lunch between viewings on Thursday, and I thought I was going to see her coming through the doorway of the kitchen into the dining room at any moment. John had something bothersome going on with his shoulder while I was home. My first thought was to tell him to ask my Mam-maw.
I really just felt disoriented the whole time I was in. Just the suddenness, not only of death, but the planning of such a long journey, and then being home when I wasn´t supposed to be... when I was supposed to be 4,000 miles a way, was just confusing to all my senses. I kept feeling like I just had to... wait it out, ride it out. I kept telling myself, this is fine, this is just the new reality as it is, and she´s at rest now.
I don´t think it was until I got on the plane in Pittsburgh that I really let the hurt all the way in. There was a woman sitting behind me, I think she was dying, but she was definitely a cancer patient, and she was traveling with a friend to Philadelphia. I think they were going to see someone for the last time. Listening to them talk, dancing around the truth, her calling herself pathetic, was just so... reminiscent of what I´d just been through. Mam-maw used to refer to herself as pathetic when she wasn´t feeling well, when she felt like all she did was complain. So I started crying on the plane, unseen, thankfully. I don´t know what I would have done if some stranger had begun trying to comfort me. I just held onto the gold heart-shaped nugget she had made out of the old chains of her mother´s jewelry while the plane took off and stared hard out the window. It felt like, taking off, I was really leaving her for the last time. I could look at her in her casket, I could visit the newly dug grave, but getting in the air, leaving the ground where she´d most recently had breath, that´s what did it.
And then I was back in Spain, also suddenly-seeming. And I figured out the train back to Valladolid, and I was in a taxi. Then I was in my bed, taking a 4-hour nap. Then I woke up and it was 3:30 in the afternoon, and I´d gone home, been with family, been to my grandmother´s funeral. I went for Mexican with Jesse and drank a huge margarita while staring at the floor and not being conversational at all. I showed my grandpa pictures of my London trip. And then... I was just... back here. Going to get groceries with Savannah. Unloading them into the refrigerator. Reading to focus my consciousness. Going for paella with Ntina, Aleks, and Savannah, again... mostly to focus my consciousness and also to keep myself awake to try to get over the jet lag sooner. Walking home from dinner, Savannah was buzzed and talking a lot to me. I felt I could not respond. I was just focusing on getting up the sidewalk and getting into my bed.
Today I slept in. Trying to let myself recuperate gradually from the stress and the jet lag so I don´t get sick. I spent hours planning my conversation class only to have a technical difficulty, rendering my Power Point presentation on Valentine´s Day incorporating the use of the conditional... useless. Usually, that would irritate me, but today it made me absolutely crazy. I taught class. It went well. I think they got something out of the role plays they did and enjoyed the class, so maybe my three hours of planning didn´t go completely to waste.
Then I went to the gym. Ran lightly on the treadmill for 40 minutes. Took it easy because I´m recuperating from several things. Two weeks before I went home I started having a flare up of tendonitis in my ankle. The next week I had a stomach bug and couldn´t eat. Then I found out about my grandma and went through jet lag to encounter grief. Then I came back. So... I just didn´t want to overdo it the first day back to it. 40 minutes running with 10 minutes walking was plenty for today.
Came home. Made some dinner... was thinking of doing porkchops and a zucchini pasta, but then I thought, the pizza I heated up for lunch due to realizing I had no bread for a grilled cheese sandwich... would dry out before tomorrow. So I reheated the rest of the pizza, fixed some broccoli and had that for dinner. Good enough.
Anyway, those are about all my thoughts right now. I need to get back to this. I feel better when I write... as negative as this post probably seems. But I needed to get that out of my system before sleeping, so... meh.